MST3K:Community Portal/Archive
An Idea for Episode Summaries... Rather than shoehorning all of the riffs at the bottom of the page, why don't we include the best and most memorable in the actual episode guides? Something like this: "Whenever the man attempts to use something that once contained springs, Coily lunges out of the device, shrieking "No springs!" (Oh, and no redemption either! - Crow) before chuckling demonically and disappearing with an odd whistling noise". Whaddya think, sirs? Darktruth 20:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC) :The original idea for the riff section was that they'd provide explanations for the ones the average person wouldn't be likely to get the significance of. That said, I'm not entirely averse to your suggestion.--TVsGrady 21:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC) Pages I'm not sure how many other pages are like this, but the Shorts List has a white table with yellow lettering on it which makes it really hard to read. Is there any way to fix this? Thor2000 (talk) 17:43, January 25, 2015 (UTC) :Fixed. You basically have to go line by line and remove the background colors that had been added to each line. Darth Prefect (talk) 22:50, January 25, 2015 (UTC) Goals for the Wiki Well, I've now been given Admin rights. First order of business is to figure out long-term goals for the wiki. I am working on a skin so that the wiki doesn't look quite so bare. I will also be updating and reworking the entry page (it looks old and tired). One thing I would like to have everyone seriously consider is reworking how we name the episode pages. I think if the wiki is going to cover every spin-off production, renaming is the only way to make things clear for casual readers. For instance, currently Santa Claus Conquers the Martians points to the MST3K episode. But there is also Cinematic Titanic: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and, eventually, Rifftrax Live: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I would like to suggest that we rename MST3K episodes to include their experiment/episode number or to add "MST3K" at the beginning. So, SCCtM will move to 321 - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians or MST3K: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians seems a bit too long, but we could go that way, too.) This would leave the original page, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as a place for discussion of the movie itself, allowing all non-riff-related information to be in one place (with only a short synopsis on the various episode pages). Thoughts? Darth Prefect (talk) 05:42, January 24, 2015 (UTC) :Yeah, "MST3k" or "MST3K" would be far easier ways of accessing it and, if you like, with the experiment number as well and we can worry about how it comes up in search engines or gets redirected later. I personally wasn't going to create any pages for films riffed by the others that had previously been on MST3k- I was mainly thinking we could just note it in the background information on the 321 page itself but if you are comfortable with this, then that's great as well.--Gunman6 (talk) 04:19, January 27, 2015 (UTC) ::So, maybe MST3K 321 - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? That sort of thing? Darth Prefect (talk) 04:24, January 27, 2015 (UTC) :::Absolutely. :) --Gunman6 (talk) 07:23, January 27, 2015 (UTC) ok I'm new to this, so I'm sure my formatting is wrong here, but did you guys decide not to add episode numbers to the titles? I don't see that it was done, but I'd be more than happy to...my username is lipsmaka :This is something I sill intend to do, but I got bogged down in non-MST3K things and let it fall by the wayside. Darth Prefect (talk) 00:16, November 28, 2015 (UTC) Thoughts I've got two ideas: a bit more consistency in the lay outs, such as using similar templates from episode to episode, bio to bio, and 2) I'd love to see pages that described the respective "monsters" from the monsters riffed in the series. The MST3K Amazing Colossal Episode Guide had brief descriptions for the respective monsters in the series, I'd like to see them continued here if possible. Thor2000 (talk) 19:30, January 24, 2015 (UTC) :I agree. I will work on a standard format for the episode pages. As for the monster stuff, I'm not opposed, though there are a lot more pressing matters. If you'd like, start a List of monsters or something like that. It could serve as a base on which the individual pages could be built. Darth Prefect (talk) 19:38, January 24, 2015 (UTC) :: I forgot to mention I appreciate the updated background. I tried improving the main page the other day, but I couldn't get it to do what I was trying to do It looks a lot better! Thor2000 (talk) 19:54, January 24, 2015 (UTC) :::Yes, that's something only an admin can do and something I sorely wanted done. I'm still working on making it better, but this will do for now. Please look around the site and see if any of the pages don't look right in the current color scheme. Darth Prefect (talk) 20:01, January 24, 2015 (UTC) Changes to the Episode pages I've created the first of what I intend to be a series of standardized pages. I have chosen to start with 321 - Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which also reflects the name change I would like to implement for MST3K episode pages. Before I start making wholesale changes, please look the new page over and leave any comments here.Darth Prefect (talk) 02:16, January 27, 2015 (UTC) :Why two pages for the same episode? And why repeat the title at the start of the Synopsis when it could just say "Synopsis?" Thor2000 (talk) 03:24, January 27, 2015 (UTC) ::As I mentioned above, the idea is to eventually migrate all episode pages to the form of "### - Title". In the case of this episode, the current episode page at Santa Claus Conquers the Martians would be converted to a page about the film itself. This is needed because of the numerous "re-dos" that Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax have done. This format would also allow for shorts to get their own pages. ::Adding the title to "Synopsis" is because it is the brief synopsis of the film alone (the full synopsis would be on the film's page), not of the episode as a whole. The shorts would *also* have synopses, so would appear as, say "Johnny at the Fair synopsis", etc. Darth Prefect (talk) 03:38, January 27, 2015 (UTC) I could've sworn that the experiment numbers used to be visible on the template boxes on each episode but now I'm not seeing it anymore.--Gunman6 (talk) 16:17, January 28, 2015 (UTC) :That was due to a change I had done to the episode infobox template to allow the box to take its header from the title of the page, when the name field was empty. I had used the more common syntax "Title" for the data string instead of "name", which was what was being used. This meant that pages that still used "name" in their infobox would default to the page title, which currently does not include the number. I have adjusted the infobox template to use "name" when it is present, so you should see the numbers again now. Darth Prefect (talk) 17:56, January 28, 2015 (UTC) "Quotes and References" cleanup I took a look at The Giant Spider Invasion and noticed that this section uses a lot of html instead of wiki markup. It makes the code look a mess and is causing display errors. I will try to fix that one, but if anyone else is working on a page and notices html, please convert it over to the appropriate wiki markup. Darth Prefect (talk) 18:23, January 28, 2015 (UTC) Colors I'm looking into standardizing the infoboxes and navigation boxes, so I wanted to check to see if everyone is okay with the dominant colors currently being used. It's mostly reds and yellows (Joel/Tom and Crow), but I could try throwing in purple (Gypsy), blue (Mike) or green (the Forresters). Thoughts? Darth Prefect (talk) 04:35, February 4, 2015 (UTC) * Just as long as the lettering is darker than the backgrounds; I hard to read several of the boxes. Thor2000 (talk) 15:39, February 4, 2015 (UTC) ::Yes, that will come with the updating. My intention with the boxes is to make the backgrounds the same as the body (in other words, transparent). Only the headers (and footers where they exist) will have a color background. Darth Prefect (talk) 03:28, February 5, 2015 (UTC) A thought Hey, guys. I'm still around, cleaning up what I can. Been a bit sidetracked by life, but I'll be more active in a little while. Anyway, I was wondering about this List of released episodes page. Does it make sense to just merge the information there with Episode List? There's a lot of doubling between the two and I think that the List of DVD releases and related articles are a better resource for the information about the releases. What do you guys think? Darth Prefect (talk) 19:03, April 13, 2015 (UTC) :I wouldn't do that but you can feel free to since one never knows if any episodes will or will not be available on home media in the future.--Gunman6 (talk) 19:12, April 13, 2015 (UTC) ::Are you just saying you wouldn't want to spend the time doing it or do you have some objection to the info from the "released episodes" page just being on the "episodes" page? Darth Prefect (talk) 19:14, April 13, 2015 (UTC) :::I'm saying the purpose of the page might be questionable if some episodes become available after awhile after years of being previously unavailable on home format.--Gunman6 (talk) 21:55, April 13, 2015 (UTC) Not to Complicate Things Further, But- I noticed that there is a whole separate Wikia/Fandom for Rifftrax. http://rifftrax.wikia.com/wiki/RiffTrax_Wiki In some cases, it has more complete information than we have here. Would it be more practical to link articles from this Wikia/Fandom to that one (using external links) rather than including a lot of Rifftrax-related material here? Like, recurring actors from BOTH projects would still qualify, but we wouldn't need to have a page on THIS Wikia/Fandom for, say, Harrison Ford or the Twilight Movies.